The Los Angeles 2028 Olympics and Paralympics Committee made a new stadium plan known on Friday that relocated some events to the surrounding Los Angeles area and beyond.
The 2017 plan to reopen the Olympics in Los Angeles contained the biggest change to the original plans, which included outsourcing of boat slalom and softball to Oklahoma City.
The largest ball facility in the LA area seats only 2, 000 people, which is below the Olympic standards for seats fans, according to the LA28 committee. There are no canoe slalom venues in the western United States, according to the LA28 council. The committee stated in a speech that LA28’s boat racing and ball facilities are built to foreign competition standards, allowing for LA28 to recognize cost savings and revenue gains to help its balanced budget.
LA28 also acknowledges that the Oklahoma City group has regularly supported major sports events and is assured they will do the same for these Olympic competitions.
Oklahoma City every hosts the Women’s College World Series. Devon Park will host the Olympic softball team, but the IOC’s plan of using corporate names for stadiums and venues during opposition prevents it from being completely named. The 13, 000-seat softball-only area has undergone numerous renovations since its beginning in 1987. Canoe racing will be held at Rainbowsport OKC, the exterior outdoor area that hosted the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic tests for rowing and kayaking.
Moving some events to Oklahoma and using existing structures in and around LA, in the opinion of committee president Casey Wasserman, “accompanies more than$ 150 million in savings and new revenue to help maintain a balanced budget”
Since London was given the 2012 Summer Olympics in 2005, the International Olympic Committee has approved requests for places that included temporary structures or permanent facilities that could be substantially reduced in size for long-term use by professional sports teams. These innovations would ideally lower the cost of building the infrastructure for the events while preventing the fate of Olympic sites like Athens, which still has a few” white elephants” —venues that have either been abandoned or underused in the 20 years since hosting the 2004 Games.
Moreover, the IOC has encouraged administrators to utilize existing locations outside of the host city. For the future Paris Games, for example, football games may be played across France, but surfing events will take place over 9, 800 yards away on the other side of the earth in Tahiti, an island nation that remains under European independence.
Having Olympic events outside of the host city is n’t a new phenomenon, and it’s not even the first time this has happened for Los Angeles. Beginning in 1984, preliminary soccer games were played as far north as Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, and as far east as Harvard University in Boston and the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.
LA is exploiting the city’s numerous both new and old facilities. The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum will host track and field matches, making it the first stadium to host the sport at three different Olympic Games. Basketball will be played at the soon-to-open Intuit Dome, which will house the NBA’s Clippers in the late 2024. Gymnastics will be at the Crypto.com Arena. And with an idea seemingly borrowed from the recent U. S. swimming trials at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, SoFi Stadium will host the swimming competitions. ( SoFi will also serve as a host stadium for the 2026 men’s World Cup, which will be played throughout the U. S., Mexico and Canada. )
There are other sports that LA and Oklahoma have in common with. For close to a decade, the Dodgers ‘ top two minor league teams, the Triple- A Oklahoma City Baseball Club ( nee Dodgers ) and the Double- A Tulsa Drillers, have resided in the Sooner State.